Nine in ten food manufacturing companies believe they understand what it takes to build and maintain a strong food safety culture, yet only 27% report that their employees consistently follow established procedures. Intertek Alchemy’s 2024 Frontline Worker Training Programs Survey.
As a result, a staggering 73% of companies say that despite training efforts, employees don’t always adhere to protocols. The most common reason for this non-compliance is employees preferring the “old way” (57%), followed by employee attrition (34%) and lack of strict discipline (34%).
To help companies improve employee performance, the study highlights some best practices for workplace training.
- Additional training time: Only 30% of frontline employees receive at least 20 hours of additional training per year beyond their onboarding experience. Companies that provide at least 20 hours of additional training per year have 13% higher employee motivation. And motivated employees are three times more likely to follow established procedures.
- Professional Development: While the majority of companies (84%) offer refresher training to their frontline employees, only 38% of employees receive professional development training. Companies with mature professional development programs are 119% more likely to have a positive impact on employee retention.
- Accurate work instructions: While most facilities offer on-site supervisor coaching (73%) and peer-to-peer training (62%), 22% of companies report that employees communicate misinformation to their colleagues. However, companies that integrate cross-functional team members into their learning management or training teams are 58% more likely to have accurate employee-to-employee coaching.
- Enhancement Program: Team meetings (78%) and coaching by team leaders (67%) are the most common methods of training reinforcement. Companies with strong training reinforcement programs are three times more likely to have employees consistently follow standard operating procedures.
- Training Documents: Only 31% of food manufacturing companies use a learning management system (LMS) to document and manage employee training records; more commonly, companies rely on paper-based documents (33%) or spreadsheets (33%). Using an LMS makes training data more accurate and easier to access and track.
- Examples of site-specific training: Nearly all companies (92%) that make it a practice to use site-specific examples from their own facilities in their training materials say it helps employees recognize and prevent potential problems in the field.
For more information, Download the full report.